when your redwood arms wrap round my thin birch frame, i can feel you reading my thoughts fresh as ink on shorn raw bark. my skin is paper, thin and damp, glowing white like exposed pulp beneath husk. your fingers, quivering like branches through breeze, read my goose bumps like braille. you can tell how i mess those dense, green forests--the ones i've never seen or smelled or sunk roots into. i am used to the thin and tangled limbs of mangroves, their shallow root systems in the sand and fickleness in those everyafternoon rainstorms. i stutter to explain: i don't believe in much besides strong wind and salt air. but i could reach my roots far into this rich soil if the songbird that hovers in your branches would stay through the winter, and if you would still whisper me to sleep when brisk air rattles your sturdy branches--even after autumn when we're both bare and brittle.
